I'm Mike Lazaridis, founder of Research in Motion. Since launching BlackBerry in 1999 it's been my goal to provide reliable real-time communications around the world. We did not deliver on that goal this week. Not even close.

I apologise for the service outages this week. We've let many of you down. But let me assure you that we're working round the clock to fix this. You expect better from us, and I expect better from us.

It's too soon to say this issue is fully resolved.

But let me give you more detail about what's happening. We're now approaching normal BlackBerry service levels in Europe, the Middle East, india and Africa. We continue to monitor the system very closely. We 're working very hard to continue to stabilise the system, and we're seeing steady improvements. We expect to see continued progress, and possibly some instability, as the system comes back to normal service levels everywhere.

We know that you want to hear more from us, and we're working to update you more frequently through our websites and social media channels as we gather more information.

I'd like to give you an estimated time of full recovery around the world - but I cannot do this with certainty at this time.

For those of you affected, I know this is very frustrating. We're doing everything in our power to restore regular service levels, and we're working tirelessly to restore your trust in us.